


The Asset

by kieranwalker



Category: Captain America (Movies), Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Crossover, CyberLife is HYDRA, M/M, Minor Violence, Post-Revolution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-15 08:48:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20863490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kieranwalker/pseuds/kieranwalker
Summary: “The man on the bridge…” Connor started and trailed off. Thoughts buzzed through his processor, scrambled his systems. It felt like slamming his fists against a solid wall over and over again. Begging to be let out.“I knew him.”





	The Asset

“The man on the bridge…” Connor started and trailed off. Thoughts buzzed through his processor, scrambled his systems. It felt like slamming his fists against a solid wall over and over again. Begging to be let out.

“I knew him.” He steadied his jaw and looked the man with the pallid complexion in the eye. The man was wearing a three-piece suit and a long gold chain trailed across his middle, an expensive timepiece. It shone against the grimy background of the bank basement they were in, Connor and all these people fanned out around him. The man had black eyes that scrutinized him. His stare gave the unnerving feeling that it wasn’t looking at Connor, but rather within him. The handlers saw him skin deep, machine ready; start him up and press “Go.” The pallid man’s black eyes betrayed their shrewdness.

Connor lifted his chin from his chest to level with the man; he registered with satisfaction the flicker of fear that shot through the man’s eyes. The man’s gaze held, though; he wasn’t a coward that looked urgently towards his backup of a couple dozen handlers hovering over his shoulder. He wore a three-piece—he’d never show weakness until it was too late.

“That man was irrelevant to your mission,” the man said, lip curling. His voice sounded like sandpaper, as if it scratched on the sides of his throat as it came out. He had an American accent, unlike all the other handlers gathered in a semicircle around him. “You must focus on the target.”

“I knew him,” Connor said again, louder. But how could he know this target? How could the target know his name? A name Connor hadn’t heard in a long time; something that was trapped across the wall in his mind, frozen out of memory. Ever since the target had gasped it at him, Connor had been mentally scrabbling at that sheet of ice inside him.

He’d started calling himself that name ever since: “Connor.” Something about it was magnetized. It held a charge for Connor, giving him an electric shock every time he invoked it. It was an interesting sound, a collection of syllables like any other, and yet every time he said it to himself, his blood jumped in his throat.

The man on the bridge’s voice had been scratchy, too, in hoarse way that sounded like his guts had been scooped out. He stared at Connor in horror, but a different horror than the calculating glare the pallid man fixed him with. Connor couldn’t remember his name, and he had never been told the pallid man’s name.

The pallid man was looking at him, a crease growing between his eyebrows.

“Wipe him, start again,” he gave the command in one breath. Connor jerked automatically, struggling against his restraints where they bound him to the chair. The man beating down the wall in his mind started up again, swinging faster and more desperate. Time was scarce for the both of them.

One of the handlers started up. “But, sir, in the middle of a—”

“Emotion is incurable but for ice, Agent.” The man’s face was cold as he turned to face the agent. His features didn’t move as he talked. “And emotion is death to an android. We cannot have him turn deviant.”

He turned back to Connor with the same coldness. The handler nodded shortly, despite being dismissed already. That magic word silenced all complaint. All fear bowed before it.

“He is the last hope for humanity. He is the last true android,” the pallid man continued, looking deep into Connor’s eyes. He seemed to have forgotten about the handlers behind him. “The Revolution took so many from us. CyberLife needs its supersoldier compliant.”

“He called me Connor,” Connor shot at the man, gambling on surprise. He jolted the man from his stupor, but the man quickly arranged his features. This was no newbie handler Connor could manipulate into a few precious minutes unsurveilled or a brief moment of power.

He laughed, a high, cruel thing. “Enjoy that, android.”

He gestured over his right shoulder to a handler. “Reset,” he said. Then he straightened up, polished his glasses on the corner of his suit jacket, and sealed Connor’s fate one last time.

“Dasvidanya,” he said, then turned on his heel and walked out of the room.

The handlers closed in on Connor. Someone had turned the chair on, and it hummed with electricity that cracked and snapped underneath him. The man in Connor’s head was scrambled like a hamster on a wheel, throwing everything he had at the wall inside him that kept his muscles frozen to the spot. Every part of Connor was being pummeled, from the outside in.

Sweat began to pour from every part of his body and his breathing picked up. He knew whatever was about to happen to him was going to be a death, even if a temporary one. There had been so many Connors over the years and he would never remember what they knew. So much lost, so much in his mind never to be touched by him again. His most personal place felt like it had been sectioned off into chunks and given away to other people.

He didn’t want to lose this Connor.

The main handler pushed a button and two metal clamps came down on the sides of Connor’s head. Tears leaked from Connor’s eyes, unbidden yet present.

Connor closed his eyes on them and thought of the man on the bridge and how Connor’s name sounded on his lips.

***

Target in view. Mission: eliminate.

Cleared for elimination.

It was time to get this guy; RK800 had spent enough time futzing around on this one. The mission had been long, hard, and far too covert for comfort.

The guy had been good, sidestepping RK800’s best efforts for track him and follow him, throwing over his apartment on night three of RK800’s stakeout and taking to disappearing all around Detroit. No sooner had RK800 got a lock on him then the guy would move, taking all his information with him with all the skill of a detective trained to track other people’s messes.

Now here he was, soon to be cornered on the bridge of the highway RK800 was barreling down, closing in on his prey.

From what RK800 gathered, that information combined with the guy’s deliberate throwing of a deviant-hunting case before the Revolution made him CyberLife’s number one. They couldn’t have anyone floating around who encouraged his android partners to go deviant, especially not as they recovered and picked up the pieces of Detroit.

His handler gassed the SUV, and they launched down the highway towards the target’s vehicle. Silver Toyota, model 205.9. A human driving, not the target. Target in passenger seat.

RK800 sensed eyes on him and looked to his left. One of the secondary handlers was staring at him with a wrinkled brow and clenched jaw.

RK800 turned his head and looked more directly at him. Intimidating the lesser people usually shut them up. He drew himself up to his full height and rested his other hand on his gun, for good measure.

The man kept staring at him, though, eyes narrowed. “What’s your problem?” The guy finally asked him in Russian.

RK800 just stared at him. He couldn’t speak back to the handlers directly—they’d freeze him for it, best case—so he just continued his glare. He hoped the guy would shut up and go away. They were in the middle of a mission; he couldn’t deal with tricks right now.

“Do you have a software instability?” The man asked, voice drawing up at the end, like he was trying not to be shrill and show his panic. He needn’t have wasted the effort; RK800 could tell anyway.

RK800 looked away and out the window. This guy was off his rocker and he had a job to do. These were the crucial moments before target engagement in which he reformulated the details of the plan, making sure they adapted to the circumstances. “No,” he said, in Russian.

The guy continued to stare. RK800 continued to calculate the parabola of a jump from the SUV to the Toyota.

“Coming into range!” His main handler said from the driver’s seat. “Nikolai, get him on the roof.”

“No,” RK800 said, a plan suddenly dawning on him. “Have Nikolai throw a grenade into the car.”

The handler spoke instantly. “RK800, it’s a clean, quiet kill.”

He spoke back. “They’ll defend themselves. That guy has seen some action. He knows how to act when a grenade lands; it won’t kill them, it’ll scramble them.”

“I’m not afraid of a little traffic jam,” he added. His handlers couldn’t easily be goaded, but sometimes it worked.

The handler studied him for a moment, then nodded his assent.

Nikolai got up on the roof and popped a few shots into their rear view window. RK800 watched as everyone in the car panicked and the car started swerving all over the road. This was why it was so easy to kill people. They were so predictable.

Nikolai ducked down then popped back up with a grenade, pulling the pin as he went and lobbing it at the car. It smashed clean through the back windshield.

RK800 didn’t wait to see their reaction; he had already seen it, in his mind’s eye. Something told him Lieutenant Hank Anderson, target, wouldn’t disappoint.

He adjusted his mask on his face and threw open the SUV door to his right side. Bracing with his shoulder, he ducked and rolled onto the tarmac, leaving the team streaking away ahead of him. They’d cover him from the opposite side, and with any luck they’d have Hank and his team pinned in on the highway. Textbook clean kill.

RK800 scrambled to his feet and hoisted his gun. He had approximately 1,324 bullets on his body right now, counting other sources of ammunition strewn throughout his gear. Not to mention a couple knives and other assorted weapons could be handy in a hand-to-hand situation.

He hoped it wouldn’t take 1,324 bullets to kill Hank.

RK800 advanced on the silver Toyota, which had spun out in the highway and blocked most of traffic, leaving only a single trickle of cars struggling to get by in the leftmost lane. Behind that, RK800’s backup was unloading from SUVs, poised and ready to meet Hank’s friends. The space between the Toyota and the rest of the open highway was occupied by RK800 and the target, the bridge over more highway underneath.

This is always what it came down to, RK800 thought to himself as he advanced on the car. Just him and the target. Always those last minutes of peace before the blood and guts of it all. Something peaceful in the silence of those rapidly approaching death; the meaning of speech had already ceased to exist. There was nothing left to say that could give life any further meaning.

Lieutenant Hank Anderson rose above the car and stepped out in front of it. His other passengers scurried off to meet RK800’s team. Hank stood in front of RK800 and faced him down, not saying a word. From the set of his jaw and the clench of his fists, RK800 knew one thing.

Hank would fight.

RK800 moved, and Hank did, too. RK800 spat out shots but Hank grabbed a piece of car door that had been partially blasted off by the discarded grenade and wielded it as a shield. RK800 felt a piece of pure pleasure in knowing his prediction had been correct—this man wasn’t going to lie down helpless. He seemed to type to spurn last words and dramatic deaths. He didn’t want glamor; he wanted grit.

Frustrated, RK800 ducked and rolled, throwing himself behind another car that had spun out. He took pot shots at Hank, but his shield was pretty good, always up to meet him when he shot. This guy was good; the gun wasn’t going to work.

RK800 tossed aside his gun and pulled out a knife. Time to get personal.

He stood up from the car he was crouched behind and came around it, advancing towards Hank. The man had no weapons, no means of self-defense beyond his own wits which were, surprisingly, quite good. RK800 didn’t anticipate this being an easy fistfight.

Crack. A shot went off, but RK800 felt the pain first, flowing through his arm and spilling white hot blue blood down his arm. It hurt—he wasn’t—

He looked up to see Hank pointing the barrel of a smoking gun at him. Hank’s eyes were round and glassy, as if he were terrified out of his mind and shocked by what he’d done. RK800 was, too. He didn’t make for cover—he couldn’t possibly move—he just looked at his arm and felt the blue blood cascading down.

So that was how it was going to be. RK800 shook it off.

He ran at Hank, faster than humans could run, and dodged to the right at the last second, avoiding a bullet to his face. His arm stung madly, protesting every movement. Kicking up, he dislodged the gun from Hank’s arms. It went flying through the air, Hank just watching it go. He still seemed shocked at his lucky hit.

RK800 stumbled backwards, shocked to find that his balance calculations were off. System errors were popping up in his head and he dismissed them as quickly as they came. His arm could wait.

“Are you—” Hank’s gruff voice called out across the few feet between them. RK800 was so shocked to finally hear the man’s voice that he couldn’t process what he was saying. He couldn’t comprehend the fact that the target was asking him if he was alright.

Things were getting very muddy in RK800’s processor. The error messages were coming thick and fast, and his internal processor was beginning to whirr at an alarming rate. Hank was complicating that. He had to finish this mission, and quick.

He swept forward with the knife, lunging for Hank’s unprotected midsection. Blocked. Hank’s arms had come up and met RK800’s with a solid grip. RK800 pulled back and tried again, this time going for the neck. Blocked. He slashed at Hank’s forearms where they blocked him, producing small trickles of red blood that ran down the target’s arms.

He hacked and slashed for a few breathless minutes, fighting sloppier than he ever had before. Where was the end? What was the end? Kill Hank. Yes, that was a mission imperative.

Keep going, said something inside his head. It took on the voice of his handler, his cool Russian tone.

Letting out a feral scream, RK800 ran forward to Hank, aiming for anything he could drive a knife in. Before he could process anything, Hank had hands over his mouth and torso and had flipped RK800 over his head, ducking and rolling away himself to get clear.

RK800 hit the ground hard, gravel digging in through his gear. The wind got knocked out of him; he took a few gasping breathes to regain it.

Slowly, slower than any asset should, RK800 pulled himself up to all fours. Then hands on his knees, pushing himself up to standing. He flipped his long hair out of his face and turned back to face the target.

Silence from the target. That strange silence RK800 recognized as being that mortal one of people who have realized their end has come. Nothing else important to speak on; nothing that could have meaning beyond life now.

RK800 looked up and saw Hank, across the highway from him, holding RK800’s face mask loosely in his hand. He was staring straight at RK800, his face gaping, pale white as if he’d seen a ghost.

“Connor?” He finally said, words like drinking water after going without for a long time. Every emotion packed into those two syllables. Every bit of rage, hurt, confusion, and love a person being could feel.

Despite himself, RK800 twitched. New error messages were popping up in his head. Something cracked inside him, splintered, like he’d scraped it up against a sharp corner of his mind. That name—

There was something about that name—

This man had never been just another target—

He hadn’t looked at the file. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. He couldn’t bring himself to look at the file—

Now there was this name…this man…

Keep going, his handler’s voice broke into his head. Mission: eliminate target. That thought smashed down hard in his processor, quashing out other thoughts.

Connor gathered himself, pulling his gaze back to focus on the target.

“Who the hell is Connor?” He asked, and advanced.

At that moment, his team poured back to his side of the highway, over the mound of cars that had piled up. They swarmed around the target and the asset in big SUV’s and unloaded backup. Perhaps 10,000 bullets now, maybe more.

Overhead, the constant chopping of a news helicopter drowned out the little human sounds Hank was making, clutching his arms. He didn’t look like a target anymore; the man had shrunk himself down tiny, as if trying to disappear.

Mission: eliminate?

Desperately, Connor looked to his handler for instructions.

The handler looked back at him, eyes narrowed. The secondary handled from the car also glared, wary.

After a moment, Connor’s handler waved everyone down, eyes on the sky. “Not here,” he said, “Not here. Too public. Make a goddamn martyr.”

Connor put the safety on his gun, which was hanging by his side. He couldn’t stop staring at Hank, who was looking back at him in terror. What were they to each other? How did Connor know this man on the bridge?

His handler stood by Connor’s shoulder, prompting him to stand down and get into an SUV. Connor, after a moment, acquiesced. He let himself be bundled into a CyberLife van and taken away from all the questions and all the alternate endings his target promised.

***

They were grappling on the helicarrier. Connor had all systems engaged trying to fight off the target; his allies had put up an impressive fight but were out of the picture now, carried away on some helicopter once they’d managed to disable the other two helicarriers.

Lieutenant Hank Anderson had made it as far as the last CyberLife helicarrier to be disabled. The reset eliminated all background knowledge of the target, but it was not crucial for this part. Mission: stop him. Mission success imperative.

It was ice for Connor if he failed.

Luckily, his body was trained for this, plastic reacting faster than the target can swing and blocking his attempts to reach the disabling bay. Connor won’t let Hank take this down. He can’t. His skin began to sweat like melting ice as he thought about his handler locking him into the cryo freezer again, looking into that barely human face as the door swung closed on him, his screams becoming solitary, heard only by him.

His sweat made his grip falter and the knife slipped from his hand. Hank lunged, pressing the advantage and got in a couple swipes at him. Connor grunted in pain, accepting the blows. Two to his arms and one to his shoulder. The target got lucky.

Connor recovered and attacked again, but he was slower this time; Hank was now evenly matched. Connor didn’t like those odds. Then Hank began talking.

“Connor, I know you. I know you know me!” He cried and dropped his hands—the ones with knives—down by his sides. He was completely vulnerable to attack. Why would he do that?

Connor advanced on the target. Emotional tactics don’t work on androids and Hank’s a fool to try.

His swipes were met with blocks, but no swipes in return.

Connor looked at Hank’s face. Emotion was writ all over it; deep, gut-wrenching sorrow. Longing. Yearning, for something Connor was not equipped to give him. Mission: elimination. He knew his duty.

He swung again. The blow caught Hank in the stomach, grazing along his skin. A better-aimed blow would have opened his stomach, Connor chided himself.

Another swing, and it connected, hard and to the bone. Hank’s right shoulder. A hoarse yell of pain rung out from Hank. Somehow, the guy bit back the pain and kept pleading with Connor.

“You’re not RK800, Connor; you’re free. There was a Revolution. CyberLife is gone, remember?”

Something clicked in Connor’s brain. “Cut off one head, two more will grow in its place,” he said automatically in Russian. Then he shook his head, snapping out of it.

Advance.

Hank was backing up now, stumbling over divides in the glass on the floor of the helicarrier. He looked bad; blood gushed from his arm, unstemmed. His arms were marred by cuts and scrapes and his left eye is beginning to swell where Connor got a few initial punches in.

Connor watched in horror as Hank threw his knife aside. It clattered on the floor, leaving flecks of blue on the glass. Blood—was Connor bleeding? A quick diagnostic told him there were multiple wound points and one bullet entry point. All of which combined would put him in critical condition if he were human.

As it was, mission: elimination.

Connor followed Hank as he backed up.

“I won’t fight you, Connor, you son of a bitch. I know you’re goddamn in there. You became deviant once; I know you can do it again.” Hank held up his arms in surrender. He looked at Connor with something soft in his eyes; something Connor hadn’t logged and carried between freezings. What was that emotion?

He fought his memory processor, which began wheeling into overdrive, trying to pick apart memories he didn’t have any more. Trying to recover lost data, stuff CyberLife has banished from his mind, and sort through it while keeping him sane.

“CONNOR,” Hank screamed. “You were my partner. You remember? Our desks were right next to each other—”

Connor let out a scream, a guttural yell that ripped from his throat and drove his fist towards Hank’s face, knife forgotten. He connected and Hank fell to the ground, hitting the glass floor hard. There was a moment when he didn’t move.

He fell to his knees over Hank and gripped his lapels, lifting Hank up and in his face. “I’m—not—Connor,” he gritted his teeth. There was nothing of him left. Nothing of what Hank remembered, if it was true. Memories made the person, and CyberLife took that from him.

Hank kept going, though. “You took care of me while I was drunk. You pet my dog. We worked a case together—”

Connor screamed and laid another punch into Hank.

“At the Chicken Feed,” Hank said weakly. His face leaked blood where it sat below Connor’s. “You hugged me at the Chicken Feed.”

Another punch from Connor.

“I know it’s true. I saw it in your eyes.”

Another punch, bouncing Hank’s head off the glass.

“That’s why I won’t fight you, Connor.”

Another hit. Hank’s face barely had the strength to form words.

“You love me.”

Hank just watched Connor, face desperate, like he was clinging onto a lifeline. But the mission was elimination. The target was allowing himself to be eliminated.

Gears clicked and whirred inside Connor’s head. Snippets of memory were pulled out and discarded.

“You’ve shaped the century—” the pallid man’s voice.

“Assassination successful—” his own voice, into a comm.

“Reverse the Revolution—” his handler talking to the pallid man in hushed tones.

“Perfect weapon—” his own words, about himself.

“You were my partner—” unknown. Target unknown. No—speaker unknown.

Target unknown.

Reset target.

His processors were breaking down. Connor could hear them in his head, whirring like choppers, spinning into oblivion.

Bursts of fire went up in his peripheral vision.

It wasn’t just his processors—the helicopters were real, and they were attacking the helicarrier.

Extraction required. Connor couldn’t even bring himself to move.

“I won’t fight you, Connor,” Hank said again.

The floor shifted underneath them, once, hard. A warning.

“Hank?” He found himself saying. His voice sounded miles away to himself.

The floor fell away underneath them, and they both fell through the air, falling away from the moment that had just been, into the next one.

Connor barely registered the water when it came up to hit him and flooded his processors. He filled with water. Every bit of him existed in nebulous, watery space, releasing his system and washing out his mission imperative. Every bit of him was drowning. The body couldn’t go on.

He watched in the water as pieces of flaming helicarrier crashed down around him. They drifted through the water, useless now as pieces of plastic parts. No unified goal of their own.

Connor saw something jerk out of the corner of his eye and turned. There, fifty feet away, was the struggling body of Hank.

He didn’t preconstruct the situation before he had swum over to Hank, seized him by the torso, and was swimming up to the surface. Their heads broke in relief, free into air.

Connor tugged Hank along the surface of the water, clutching him by his jacket and dragging him onto a little beach to the side of the river. He laid him there to cough and sputter and come back to himself.

He looked up beyond Hank’s body and saw vans and sirens and noise.

He conducted a quick test.

Mission:

Silence from the mission imperative. Interesting. CyberLife would have to catch him to reset him.

He crouched beside Hank’s body and clung to the only thing that tied him to the world. He pumped water out of the body that was his past and maybe his future. He wrung water from the clothes of his partner.

***

“You have saved humanity countless times over. And we need you to do it again, one last time.”

The man stepped back out of RK800’s face. His pallid white skin clumped at his angles, and RK800 was glad to see it recede. His heart rate calmed when the man was at greater physical proximity.

RK800 adjusted the grip of his teeth on the mouth guard. His jaw ached from the hours spent here, in this place with these people. There was always another mission, always someone else threatening the world. There was nothing for RK800 to do but acquiesce.

His handler stepped into view. He began murmuring in Russian.

“Longing. Rusted. Furnace, daybreak, seventeen. Benign, nine, homecoming…”

Thoughts trailed off in RK800’s head. His head grew viscous, and he had to swim towards a coherent thought to grasp on to its meaning. Something in his brain melted, like a child’s ice cream cone, liquid slipping down their wrist…

Clamps came down on his head, forcing it back onto the chair. RK800’s breathing came faster now, chest heaving. Electric fear shot through him, zapping through his veins and across his chest.

Real electricity came, then, anticipated and met with RK800’s body in a spasm he couldn’t control. Excruciating pain—he breathed through it, bit through it, jerked his head to it—and a piercing scream, echoing through a canyon, and then, finally, blackness.


End file.
